The mountain loomed before them like the frozen rib of a dead god.
Its broad shoulders devoured the sky, jagged ridges biting into the low grey clouds. Wind howled along its scarred face, dragging flurries of snow across black stone. Up close, the mountain did not feel like part of the world.
It felt like the world had grown around it.
Kel stood at its base, boots half-sunk in snow layered over ancient rock. His long coat whispered in the wind, the hem dusted white. Strands of hair had escaped his tie, clinging damply to his forehead and cheeks. Each breath left his lips in slow, measured clouds, condensation catching briefly in the air before vanishing.
His chest ached.
Not sharply. Not yet. A deep, familiar pressure. Like a hand pressing from inside his ribs, reminding him time had never been his ally.
Behind him, Reina and Landon came to a stop.
Reina's cloak fell heavily around her frame, fur rim stiffened with frost. She adjusted the grip on her spear, knuckles pale beneath her gloves. Her gaze swept the mountain face, tracing ledges, shadows, possible paths. Her expression was calm, but there was a line between her brows that had not been there days ago.
Landon's breath came steady and deep, fogging the air around his face as he rolled his shoulders once beneath his thick leather and wool. A tear in his coat's right shoulder exposed a glimpse of bandaged skin, bruised dark. The set of his jaw never relaxed. His eyes—dark, steady—moved with slow precision across the rock.
Sera stepped forward into the foreground, pale hair streaming behind her, cloak fluttering like a piece of winter torn from the sky and given shape.
The wind seemed quieter around her.
Her eyes—icy irises ringed by faint colorless lashes—fixed on the mountain's lower slopes as if reading something etched there that only she could see.
Kel watched her profile.
She looked at the mountain not as an obstacle…
…but as if greeting an old, unwelcome acquaintance.
"From here," Sera murmured, voice low enough that the wind almost swallowed it, "the mountain decides who continues."
Reina's fingers tightened around her spear shaft.
Landon said nothing.
Kel's gaze followed the uneven fractures and frozen ledges.
Decides, hm…
He inhaled slowly.
"Where is the entrance?" he asked.
Sera did not answer at once.
She stepped forward, boots crunching into untouched snow. The movement of her cloak revealed the tribal patterns stitched across its interior—bones, serpents, curling lines resembling currents beneath ice.
Her body language shifted subtly.
Her shoulders, normally held relaxed yet ready, straightened. Her chin lifted.
She was not the girl chieftess now.
She was the bearer of something older.
"There are caves," she said. "Some swallow animals. Some swallow storms." She glanced back at them, the faint shadow of something like a smile at the corner of her lips. "And one swallows paths."
Kel's fingers twitched in his sleeves.
"Then we find that one," he replied quietly.
Sera nodded once.
"Scatter," she said. "Not far. Stay in sight of each other. Listen. The mountain hides its door, but it cannot silence its breath."
They split without further discussion.
Reina moved to the left flank, following the outline of jutting rocks and scattered boulders partially buried in snow. She walked with light steps, spear held diagonally across her body, cloak drawn close yet not restricting her arms. Her eyes lingered on any shadow large enough to hide an opening, checking, measuring.
Landon moved to the right, closer to a steep rise. Snow clung to his boots, refusing to let go, but his pace remained unhurried. Occasionally he knocked his gloved knuckles against the rock face—testing solidity, listening. The dull impacts echoed faintly, swallowed quickly by wind.
Kel remained nearer the center, adjusting his course between the two.
He ran his fingers lightly along the rock at one point—black stone, rough, iced in narrow veins. Cold bit into his fingertips even through the leather of his gloves. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat and listened.
Nothing.
No hollow resonance.
No whisper.
Just the heavy, indifferent weight of the world.
He opened his eyes again.
Snowflakes clung to his lashes, melting into cold lines down his cheeks.
His breath remained steady—but each inhale dragged faintly. A reminder that every step they took deeper into this place was not just toward some mythical cure, but also further from safety.
If the lake rejects me…
He cut the thought there.
The wind gusted sharply.
He raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"Here!"
Sera's voice cut through the air like a blade of sound.
Reina pivoted sharply, snow kicking up at her boots. Landon turned immediately, his body aligning toward the source of the call before thought.
Kel's head snapped toward her voice.
There, some distance ahead and slightly to the right, Sera stood before a jut of stone half-covered in packed snow and ice. Her cloak whipped at her back, hair like a streak of frost. One pale hand rested against a shadow carved into the mountain.
A mouth of darkness.
They closed in from three directions.
As Kel approached, the details of the formation sharpened—a rough oval carved into the mountain, tall enough for three men to enter abreast. Jagged stone teeth lined its arch, half-buried in rime. The interior dissolved quickly into black, as though light itself refused passage.
A faint draft slipped out, colder than the wind outside, carrying with it a scent of dust, mineral, and something ancient—
Not rot.
Not blood.
Something like… forgotten air.
Kel stopped beside Sera.
Her eyes were focused on the shadowed threshold, her expression more serious than he had yet seen it.
Reina arrived next, boots halting with soft crunches. Her gaze swept the entrance, then flickered briefly to Sera.
"This cave," Reina said, voice low. "You recognize it?"
Sera inclined her head.
"Stories do," she replied. "I have not walked it. No one has, and returned."
Landon came last, steps quiet for someone his size, snow still clinging stubbornly to his boots. His gaze raked over the entrance, evaluating line, angle, strike possibility—a warrior's practical appraisal of thresholds.
"Danger inside?" he asked.
"Yes," Sera answered.
He accepted that with a single nod.
Kel's eyes studied the upper corners of the entrance.
Faint lines etched into the stone—nearly obscured by ice—caught his attention. He stepped closer, raising a hand. His fingertips brushed the frozen surface, clearing a thin layer.
Symbols emerged.
Not letters. Not runes he recognized, but spiraling, looping patterns reminiscent of constellations collapsed into stone.
Sera watched him.
"Our ancestors called this, in our tongue…" she paused, eyes hooded. "…Mouth That Eats the Road."
Kel's lips moved soundlessly once as he repeated the concept internally.
He dropped his hand, letting his arm fall back to his side.
"This leads to Scarder Lake?" he asked.
"The mountain's inside does," Sera corrected softly. "This only swallows us. The path beyond… if we live to see it… may spit us out where the lake's reflection touches the sky."
Reina's brow furrowed.
"…'Reflection?'" she repeated.
Sera's gaze drifted deeper into the dark, as if trying to see through walls of stone.
"The lake is… not simply a place," she murmured. "It exists where curse and fate overlap thickest. We do not walk to it. We walk… until something opens."
"So a portal," Landon said.
The word felt almost crude in the chill air, too simple for what they were approaching.
But Sera nodded once more.
"A door that is not a door," she said. "A boundary that becomes thin when judged souls approach."
Kel's fingers curled slightly inside his sleeves.
His eyes did not leave the dark.
"And this cave," he said quietly, "is the first test."
Sera's lips curved. Not mockery. A recognition.
"Yes."
Reina adjusted the straps at her shoulders, making sure her cloak would not snag in tight spaces. The movement revealed the lines of tension in her forearms, knuckles pressing faintly against leather.
"Then we waste no more time," she said. "Light will not help us inside."
Landon nodded, already drawing nearer, his hand shifting to the hilt of his sword, thumb pressed against the guard as if reassuring himself.
Kel took a single step toward the entrance.
The air that flowed from within wrapped around him like cold breath from a sleeping beast. It seeped beneath his coat, slid along his ribs, sank to the root of the curse knotted inside him.
It pulsed once.
He swayed.
Just slightly.
Reina's hand lifted instinctively.
He straightened before she touched him.
"…I'm fine," he murmured.
His expression was calm, but a faint tightness had taken root at the corners of his mouth, a subtle tension at his jaw.
Landon saw it.
Sera… felt it.
"Once we pass inside," she said, eyes on Kel, "the mountain will… hear you. Your curse will be loud to it."
"Good," Kel replied.
The word came out softer than he intended—but steady.
"Let it listen."
Sera's gaze sharpened for a moment, then softened with something like respect mingled with unease.
Reina exhaled quietly, breath misting between them.
"Stay between us," she said.
Kel's lips twitched faintly.
"For once," Landon added.
It was hard to tell if he was joking.
Kel let out a thin breath that might have been a laugh, or just release of tension.
He stepped forward.
And crossed the threshold.
The world changed immediately.
Sound died, as if left outside with the snow.
The air grew thick, pressing against skin. The cold inside was not the biting chill of open wind, but a deep, stagnant cold—like water never touched by the sun.
Light from the entrance spilled in behind them, stretching over uneven stone and frost-veined walls. It did not travel far before being swallowed whole.
Kel's eyes adjusted slowly.
The rough-hewn tunnel sloped downward, floor uneven with age. The walls were close but not suffocating—wide enough for two abreast with care. They glistened faintly, moisture frozen into delicate patterns resembling branching veins.
Footsteps behind told him the others had entered.
Reina's presence settled at his left shoulder, close but not touching. Landon's steady weight anchored their rear. Sera's quiet tread came from slightly ahead and to the right, leading them deeper with steps that never hesitated.
The entrance began to shrink behind them—light thinning to a pale smear.
Then, it was gone.
Darkness pressed in.
Reina reached into her cloak, withdrawing a small orb of pale light—a minor tool obtained back in the Rosenfeld estate, its glow soft, contained. She twisted its casing once. A muted radiance unfurled, pushing the dark back just enough to see.
Faces emerged in the dimness.
Kel's features were sharpened by the pale light—cheekbones stark, eyes shadowed, lips drawn in a line that spoke of focus rather than fear. A faint sheen of cold sweat marked his temples.
Reina's expression was set, but her gaze flickered to him more often than the path. Her body angled ever so slightly toward him, as if ready to catch, deflect, or shield if necessary.
Landon's eyes swept the walls and ceiling, watching for cracks, formations, anything that suggested collapse or ambush. His free hand occasionally brushed the stone to feel for hidden hollows.
Sera's profile was a study in controlled calm. Her lips moved once, silently—perhaps reciting something. A prayer. A warning. A vow.
They descended.
Each step echoed faintly, the sound quickly swallowed by the stone.
Kel felt it then.
A thrum.
Very faint at first, like the distant beat of a drum beneath the earth. His curse reacted—its invisible tendrils tightening, coiling within his chest.
His breath hitched.
"Kel?" Reina's voice was soft.
He raised a hand.
"I feel something," he said.
Sera did not turn around.
Her voice drifted back to them, carrying easily in the compressed air.
"Good."
Reina's brows knit. "Good?"
Sera slowed slightly, just enough that they walked closer.
"If you did not feel it," she explained, "there would be no door for us. The lake answers the cursed. The broken. The ones who bleed beneath their skin."
Her gaze, briefly, moved toward Kel.
"And you are loud, traveler."
Kel's lips parted, but he did not argue.
The thrum grew more pronounced as they descended deeper, no longer a whisper but a slow, steady heartbeat in the stone around them. It did not sync with his own pulse—no, it conflicted with it, like two rhythms playing against each other.
His curse responded to each wave.
Heat and cold flickered under his ribs.
He gritted his teeth, jaw clenched, but his steps did not falter.
Reina noticed the tension in his shoulders, how his hands had curled into fists within his sleeves.
Landon noticed how his exhale had shortened.
Sera noticed… and walked a little faster.
"The portal," Kel said quietly, grounding himself with the word, "…is ahead."
Sera inclined her head.
"Deeper," she confirmed. "Until the mountain's bone grows thin, and the lake can press its face against it."
The image was unsettling—water on the other side of stone, waiting like an eye.
Kel drew breath through his nose, forcing his lungs to obey.
"One step at a time," he murmured to himself.
Then, louder:
"Let's go deeper."
The orb's pale light bobbed as Reina adjusted her grip.
The tunnel narrowed, floor sloping more sharply.
Around them, the stone thrummed.
Within him, the curse stirred.
Before them—
Somewhere beyond sight—
A door that was not a door began to wake.
And the mountain…
listened.